Nigeria and cultural diplomacy

April 12, 2013 by ’Tunji Ajibade(tunjioa@yahoo.com)

’Tunji Ajibade

The Ministry of Culture and National Orientation must mean business. Its head, Edem Duke, says it wants to establish a culture and information centre in South Africa. It’s time a culture and information centre is established in South Africa. Every serious nation has one in other lands; the United States Information Service in Lagos is comparable to an old man. And there is no point trying to put a line between culture and information. The latter is the vehicle for disseminating the former, as well as other aspects of a nation’s life. Both are a useful tool in the struggle to dominate the international stage.

A Realist such as Hans Morgenthau who posited the power theory to explain international relation might not disagree. For him, power is the main determinant and it’s inseparable from national interest that’s so central to what nations do on the international scene. There is the mind-control angle to what is in a nation’s interest; cultural diplomacy is the umbrella. Under it, culture and information dissemination are a tool deployed to influence minds across borders. In its worst form, it includes negative propaganda. Even that has its benefits. After all, all diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means. Enlai Zhou said so. He was a former Chinese Premier, from 1949 through 1976. So, it is good news when Nigerian officials say they will have a culture centre in South Africa. Such ups the ante on the nation’s side. There are reasons why it does. One is the benefit Nigeria will derive from effective use of cultural diplomacy. The other is the challenge South Africa means to Nigeria. And there is the last but most important – the pursuit of Nigeria’s national interest.

The word, ‘‘Diplomacy’’, is from the Greek word, diploma, which literally means, folded into two. In ancient Greece, diploma was a certificate certifying completion of a course of study, typically folded in two. The meaning later covered other official documents such as treaties with foreign tribes. The French would call their body of officials attached to foreign legations the corps ‘diplomatique’ in the 1700s. “Diplomacy” got into the English language in 1796 through Edmund Burke’s instigation. Now, there’s no talking relations among nations without talking diplomacy: It’s the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or nations. That’s as simple as its definition can come. It’s more complicated than that however. Factors that determine how far each nation goes, and what it’s able to get on the international stage are many. They have tangible and intangible components. The level of economic resources a nation has is tangible, for instance. Its military power also is. Yet, economic resources and military might are potential power. How effectively they are used is more crucial. This is why Nigeria’s power is potential power; the reason smaller African nations look it in the face and get away with it. It’s because none perceives it as powerful.

Perception of other nations in the international system is important. Effective handling of it cannot be divorced from cultural diplomacy. Yet, the extent to which a country acquires the image of “being powerful” is also determined by the extent to which it is willing to deploy its powers to back up its stated objectives. Nigeria did that in the 1970s and 1980s, during the apartheid era. It had put its resources where its mouth was; the nation was all over the place, speaking for the rest of Africa on decolonisation, once permanently occupying the anti-apartheid chair at the United Nations until apartheid crumbled in South Africa, and the chair became obsolete. And thus went one issue, and an era in which the nation had shown commitment to a stated objective. The situation has not been what it used be ever since. Now, what Nigeria had considered its manifest destiny — the belief that Africa was its sphere of influence — had gone to the winds. The nation is being challenged left, right, and centre. And after it achieved black majority rule in 1994, South Africa especially became a foremost challenger. Not in physical struggle, but in high level performance in areas in which Nigeria should lead, having got independence since 1960. What obtains now is that the Southern African nation boasts better statistics in almost every sphere of national life; that way, it has become a member of exclusive clubs where Nigeria is not found. And there is another thing Nigeria did not commit itself to — keeping what it had done to end minority rule in South Africa fresh and alive in the minds of the citizens of that country.

Nations that enjoy excellent perception among the people of other nations work for it. For instance, this writer likes the United States. One reason is that he had grown up watching Sesame Street, an American educational programme for children that was beamed on Nigerian television stations in the 1970s and 1980s. He had also grown up listening to what the Voice of America had to feed its worldwide listeners with. And when, for the first time, this writer in his teenage years wrote to the VOA, and the station responded by post from its headquarters in Washington DC, America was made in his mind. For him, America can do no wrong. That is the power of influence, of catching minds achieved through cultural and information dissemination means. Cultural diplomacy, achieved through information dissemination is nothing but that — feeding the mind, providing information that helps understanding among peoples. This is done through other means also. International education that involves exchange of students, teachers, and professors, is one. International business promotion and tourism is another. And through libraries stocked with books on a country, its national goals and policies can be explained and passed on. That all of this was not effectively exploited in South Africa partly explains why a few ugly occurrences, the more recent ones, had taken place between Nigeria and that country in the post-apartheid years.

This writer could recollect the years the former military president, Ibrahim Babangida, came with the then newly-released Nelson Mandela to the University of Lagos. Seeing Mandela, standing less than a feet away was a dream. It was an emotional one, and that was because South Africa, during the apartheid era, had always been an emotional issue for Nigerians. It’s amazing how Nigeria’s image had been mis-managed in South Africa ever since. That’s why a South African would see a Nigerian as someone to be pushed out of his country; local details of how bad it had been for Nigerians in that country apart, Nigerians love South Africans, they always do. This writer feels a sense of brotherhood with them, in a way that can make one wonder if South Africans are the only Africans on the continent. It’s one feeling that cannot be explained. But such was the effect of the fervour apartheid rule had generated, in a period when news about the ill-treatment of South Africans, and Nigeria’s advocacy endeavours on their behalf, had filled the airwaves here. The political and information machinery here had effectively rallied Nigerians behind the struggle to have brothers and sisters in South Africa freed. Nowadays, Nigeria does not seem to benefit from all of that in form of goodwill among the people it had once expended its resources to assist. Lack of adequate information dissemination about Nigeria plays a part. So, it’s in the nation’s interest to have a culture and information centre in South Africa.

Now, a culture centre is an organisation, building or complex that promotes culture and arts. It can be a private facility, government-sponsored, or activist-run. The Nigerian government wants to take care of its in South Africa. Officials say the centre would be used to strengthen cultural relations not only with the government and people of South Africa but also with other countries in the southern part of the continent. It is good. A few things to consider though: Cultural diplomacy, a country’s means of informing other countries about its cultural or other values, is closely related to public diplomacy, which is a means by which a government presents its country to others, for the purpose of realising foreign policy goals. As opposed to public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy is realised by national and sub-national actors alike, all working together in pursuit of national interest.

So, this centre in South Africa is not one that some government officials only can sit on. The private sector and independent culture-related bodies have roles to play. And the centre is not where government officials – from the Culture and National Orientation Ministry, as well as Foreign Affairs Ministry — will sit in offices, without being proactive, reaching out to South Africans. The centre must not be starved of funds to the extent that it becomes a disused facility, and a national embarrassment, like most embassies across the world so much so that it would be better off shutting it down than allowing it open. It’s in the nation’s interest that it does not.

I visited Abuja for the first time last month and when
I was being driven to the house of my younger sister that I was visiting, she
and her husband started discoursing about Bishop Solomon Koleayo after we saw a
bill board of the Bishop’s programme along the airport road. I was so
interested in the gist that I asked more and what they told me was so
interesting that I told them I was going to
visit him to see things for my self before I go back to Australia. I visited
the prophet in his beautiful office lol I can’t remember entering an office as
beautiful as that in a long time. I waited till it got to my turn and I was
asked by his staff to enter his main office and as soon as I entered his
office, he told me I just came from Australia, I am just visiting Abuja for the
first time, and that I was about divorcing my wife. He warned me not to divorce
her because it’s her grace that has been covering me and that if I do, the
enemies would have space to enter into my life to destroy me, that I should forget
relocating back to Nigeria for now and I am having problems because I am
fighting with my wife and womanizing. I was so shocked, and dumbfounded because
I hadn’t seen anything like that before.

I never believed in seers and spiritualism. I that
went there just to see the young bishop they’ve been gossiping about just to
while away time and see things for myself but as soon as the bishop downloaded
my life to me without I even saying a word, I just feel to the ground and laid
myself to the ground in his office and begging him to pray for me.

Things where difficult for me in Sydney with I
almost losing my house and I was contemplating relocating to Nigeria to start a
new life, things have normalized for me, I have paid all my debts and I have a
good job and investment now.

Brethren, It’s only a fool that wouldn’t believe in
God and his prophets.